chairman of the Committee on Convention Resolutions. It is especially interesting as a fair illustration of the vast amount of work which women have been doing in this direction for the past thirty years.
After stating that the names and home addresses of most of the delegates to all the national political conventions of 1900 were obtained, Miss Anthony submitted copies of four letters of which 4,000 were sent in June from the national suffrage headquarters in New York, signed by herself and the other members of the committee—Carrie Chapman Catt, Anna Howard Shaw, Ida Husted Harper and Rachel Foster Avery.
(To the Republican delegates.)
The undersigned Committee, appointed by the National-American Woman Suffrage Association, beg leave to submit to you, as delegate to the approaching Republican Convention, the enclosed Memorial.
The Republican party was organized in response to the demand for human freedom. Its platform for the last forty years has been an unswerving declaration for liberty and equality. Animated by the spirit of progress, it has continued to enlarge the voting constituency from time to time, thus acknowledging the right of the individual to self-representation. This principle was embodied in the plank adopted at the Chicago convention of 1888, and has been often reaffirmed: "We recognize the supreme and sovereign right of every lawful citizen to cast one free ballot in all public elections and have that ballot duly counted." We appeal to the Republican party to sustain its record by applying this declaration to the lawful women citizens of the United States.
You will observe that this petition does not ask you to endorse the enfranchisement of women, but simply to recommend that Congress submit this question to the decision of the various State Legislatures. In the name of American womanhood we ask you to use every means within your power to bring this matter to a discussion and affirmative vote in your convention.
(To the Democratic delegates.)
Since its inception the Democratic party has had for its rallying cry the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson, "No taxation without representation," "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." Under this banner wage-earning men, native and foreign, were endowed with the franchise, by which means alone an individual can represent himself or consent to his government, and by this act the party was kept in power for nearly sixty years.
At the close of the eighteenth century this was a broad view for even so great a leader to take. In this closing year of the nine-
